Readers' comments

With an American regime whose idea of R&D consists of North Slope drilling, the past eight years have been Euope's chance to take the lead in science, and with the LHC, it has done it. While you're at it Europe, could you please develop an energy alternative to oil? The U.S. won't as long as the oil president is in office.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to note that there's a lot of buzz on the internet regarding the possibility that the supercollider will inadvertently create a black hole that will suck up the earth. For anyone interested in why this is not a legitimate concern, here's a summary of the expert opinions on the matter: http://www.takeonit.com/question/56.aspx

I tend to agree that the paucity of commentary in this article is rather discrediting to the Economist's reputation. To be quite honest, an experiment of this magnitude and relevance to basic fundamental knowledge should have been reported on on a much more regular basis by the entire media.

As another commenter stated, the benefits of particle physics have ranged from the very computer screens through which you are looking through (which indeed, in some aspects, are applications of the very same technology) to the World Wide Web, to cellphonse, to semiconductors to...well the list is endless.

The point is: the answer to the typical layman's question below of "what's it do for me?" is, from a physicist's viewpoint, "nothing." Knowledge is its own goal and its own justification.

To quote Stephen Hawking: "Together they [the LHC and the space program] cost less than one tenth of a per cent of world GDP. If the human race can not afford that, then it doesn't deserve the epithet 'human'."

If you recall, Edward Teller raised the possibility that an atomic bomb might ignite the atmosphere. That worry was not entirely extinguished until after the Trinity test. Sure, Bethe showed, theoretically, that it couldn't happen but how likely were they to ever halt the project despite any concern? The trinity test was conducted anyway without certain knowledge that it wouldn't destroy all life on earth. The problem here, again, is that no mechanism exists to take the extra time and money needed to ensure safety. When a juggernaut like this gets going and safety research is performed AFTER billions have been spent then there is zero chance that any finding will ever be allowed to stop the project. Maybe it's a false alarm this time but if that's the case then it is pure luck. As our capabilities expand ever beyond the threshold where we can so casually eliminate our existence then we have to find a way to let logic take priority over politics, economics and unbridled scientific curiosity.

RE: "What are the practical benefits that will result from this, which can be understandably explained to taxpayers?"

I don't want to sound arrogant but that's a silly question. No one can tell what the practical results will be. Pundits fail in guessing the exact quarter results of companies that sell tyres and it is much more difficult to say precisely what the practical results of the LHC will be. The usual accounting rules are not valid here. Could be anything from new energy sources to new superconductors.

To exemplify what I mean here a little story. In 1989 a British computer scientist was asked to devise a system that would make the experimental data collected by the then operational collider (by the way the 27km long tunnel was built for it - LHC just inherited it) accessible to physicists in other parts of the world. The scientist came up after a few months with a prototype he called "the world wide web". The rest, as they say, is a history.

So to come back to your question - no one can know in advance what will come out of the LHC. Just building the LHC pushed the boundaries of science and engineering. Expecting the petaflopes of data Europe decided to massively invest in "grid computing" - by now it's already a word that even MBAs have heard of. The World Wide Web story exemplifies that even though the kind of discoveries will be in most cases unexpected, there is one dead certain thing - investing in science pays off.

Two specific issues with this article, top down.First, the headline _Off into the wild, blue yonder_: _Yonder_ is not yet a noun despite valiant efforts to the contrary including the present one by the Economist. In the headline both _wild_ and _yonder_ modify the actual noun, identification of which I leave to the editor.Second: The article breezily states that the main difference between Lawrence's succession of cyclotrons and the LHC is _scale_. This claim is a disservice both to the reader and to the field of physics. Lawrence did not understand the implications of Einstein's 1905 e=mc^^2. one of which was that the cyclotron design, NO MATTER HOW LARGE OR POWERFUL, would not accelerate to more than a few percent of _c_ before Einsteinian relativity started to muddy the cyclotron's Newtonian design equations. In fact, this theoretical disconnect was so great that Lawrence started construction of a giant cyclotron only to halt work after he was convinced by his more theoretical colleagues that costly machine simply would not perform. So, cyclotrons did not heed Einstein's energy equation, while the LHC does. That's the difference between them.In physics, at least, the errors in this article are not fine points.

The actual existence of black holes, anywhere in the Universe, has been greatly oversold. The ad-hoc invocation of dark matter to make sense of the Universe is evidence that there is something profoundly wrong with current models. Nobel-prize winning physicist Hannes Alfven proposed a model of the Universe where, due to the existence of plasma, the structure of the Universe is dominated by electromagnetic forces rather than gravity. Alfven's model does not postulate a Big Bang to account for any of the data, including Hubble's redshift.

To Evan1138
Strange that since the 14 century, YONDER has been also treated as a noun or pronoun. (Anyway, the joy of English is that we can adapt it quite nicely as we wish. For example: no one objects the the noun IMPACT is now also treated as a verb and adjective.)
1. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English | Date: 2008
yonder
yon•der / ˈyändər/ •
adv. archaic or dial. at some distance in the direction indicated; over there: there's a ford south of here, about nine miles yonder. •
adj. archaic or dial. that or those (used to refer to something situated at a distance): what light through yonder window breaks? •
n. (the yonder) the far distance: flying off into the wild blue yonder.

2. Compact Oxford English Dictionary
Yonder - archaic or dialect
• adverb at some distance in the direction indicated; over there.
• determiner that or those (referring to something situated at a distance).
• noun (the yonder) the far distance.
3. American heritage Dictionary

yonder
SYLLABICATION: yon•der
PRONUNCIATION:
y n d r

ADVERB: In or at that indicated place: the house over yonder.
ADJECTIVE: Being at an indicated distance, usually within sight: “Yonder hills,” he said, pointing.
PRONOUN: One that is at an indicated place, usually within sight.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from yond, yond. See yond.

evan1138:
yonder as a noun - particularly in this well established phrase from the USAF song - is certainly more accepted than the awful, unecessary "disconnect", as used in your comment, which Marriam-Webster online thankfully still lists only as a verb.

"Could anyone explain in layman's terms why our governments consider the investment in the LHC a priority over other potential worthy causes?What are the practical benefits that will result from this, which can be understandably explained to taxpayers?"Lots of people have said the WWW & data processing, but if you want somthing a bit more phyical think of all the cooling systems, pumps, seals, valves, electromagnets special materials etc that are created and produced (and then used in industry). on the whole alot of the technology used to make the LHC will also play a big roll in Fusion, MRI technology is very similar, anything that needs big electromagnets and cooling, who knows maybe rail guns? :PAnd from the knowlage side, we are talking about a machine that could (might) probe into the workings of gravity! (if sucsessfull) could lead to the development of a process to remove gravity from things? who knows!It will bring much technology into our lives... though not all of it will bo beep bleep beep and be prefixed with the letter i

In response to De Cyclist, European scientists are trying to find another energy source - currently, the Joint European Torus (JET) based in Culham, Oxfordshire, is the first stage of experiments on nuclear fusion which, using the same physics as the sun, should be able to generate electricity relatively pollution-free within a generation. Check out http://www.jet.efda.org/ for more details.

Apart from the advance in fundamental knowledge which advances technology indirectly, we have to realize that some of the most interesting practical technology to come out of this project may not be related to the knowledge gained in fundamental physics. For instance, the data generated is enormous. (Equivalent to 3 million CD per year, or imagine a stack of CDs 12 miles high). Storing and analyzing this data would require radically new technology and techniques at both the hardware and software level. Imagine the implications when these are eventually released to the wider world: For instance, it might take web search to a whole new level.

So the collider's aim is to develop a better www? What a weak defense.

The truth is that physics is getting more and more into the realm of the unknown (unknowable?) and the price, like the energies involved, is growing exponentially. We are testing man's knowledge limits.

But bigger collider's will not get us any closer to the truth than xv century cathedrals got us closer to God.

Apart from the advance in fundamental knowledge which advances technology indirectly, we have to realize that some of the most interesting practical technology to come out of this project may not be related to the knowledge gained in fundamental physics. For instance, the data generated is enormous. (Equivalent to 3 million CD per year, or imagine a stack of CDs 12 miles high). Storing and analyzing this data would require radically new technology and techniques at both the hardware and software level. Imagine the implications when these are eventually released to the wider world: For instance, it might take web search to a whole new level.